St. Michael’s, state’s oldest Catholic church, to celebrate 175 years

Parishioners at St. Michael Church will celebrate the 175th anniversary of the founding of the church in rural Robertson County on Sunday, Oct. 1. Tennessee Register file photo by Rick Musacchio

In 1842, when the Diocese of Nashville was only five years old, and Catholics in the state of Tennessee numbered in the hundreds, a handful of Catholic families living on the rich farm land near Cedar Hill in Robertson County bought an acre of land for $5 and deeded it to Bishop Richard Pius Miles as the site of a new church.

Nearly two centuries later, St. Michael Church, the oldest Catholic church in continuous operation in Tennessee and now a mission of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Springfield, is still the spiritual home of a small band of Catholics. On Oct. 1, they will host a celebration of the 175th anniversary of the church’s founding.

“We’d be delighted if we got a really big crowd,” said Mary Jackson, one of the parishioners who is helping to plan the celebration. “We’re hoping people in the community and folks around the diocese will join us.”

Cedar Hill is located near a former stage coach line and later rail line between Nashville and Clarksville. In the 1830s and 1840s, the small clutch of Catholic families in the area would gather in their homes for Mass whenever a priest would pass through the area. The four founding families – the Byrne, Traughber, Crouch and Murphy families – would move an altar from home to home to celebrate Mass.

The church, built in 1842, is pictured before it was expanded.

In 1842, the founding families bought the land and built St. Michael Church, which was originally a small log cabin.

Today, descendants of some the founding families are still part of the community, Jackson said. “But we also have a few energetic people who have been coming for just a year or two,” she added. “So, we have a mix.”

People come to St. Michael’s because “they like the history of the church,” Jackson said. “They like having a small enough community that we all know each other. We like being small enough that we all feel ownership of it.”

On Oct. 1, the church’s history will be on display. “We hope to have the church opened to see our historical artifacts,” including old vestments, utensils used for baking and cutting hosts, and the original wooden tabernacle, said Jackson. “We have an old library we want people to see,” she said. Among the books in the library is a prayer book from the 1700s that was owned by Father Louis Hoste, the vicar general of the Diocese in the 1840s and one of the first priests to serve the community.

At 3 p.m., there will be an outdoor Mass celebrated at the altar built in the cemetery beside the church, using stones from a school that was built at St. Michaels in the 1840s.

Parishioners pose outside the church in the 1920s. They included members of the Traughber, Byrne, Long, English, Murphy, James, Boyd, Watson, Gleeson, Cotter, Fuqua, Axley and Adams families. The descendants of some of the original families still attend St. Michael.

“Hopefully, St. Michael will take care of us with good weather. He usually does,” said Jackson, who is a descendant of John Byrne, one of the founders of the church. “In case of bad weather, we will go inside the church for Mass.”

Father Mark Beckman, the pastor at St. Henry Church in Nashville, is coordinating plans for the Mass. His first assignment as a pastor was at Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Michael. Previous pastors have been invited to participate, including Father Joseph Desmond, who has indicated he will attend from New Jersey, where he is now living, Jackson said.

After the Mass, they will pay tribute to the founders of the church, who are buried beside it. Father Michael O’Bryan, the pastor at St. Frances Cabrini Church in Lebanon, will emcee the tribute. He is from Robertson County and has family ties to St. Michael, Jackson explained.

The Mass and tribute will be followed by a barbecue dinner. “We hope to have a real good turnout for that,” Jackson said.

People planning on being there are asked to RSVP by email to stmichaelcedarhill@gmail.com. The celebration is free, but donations to help pay for an upcoming renovation of the church will be gratefully accepted, Jackson said.

The church is in a remote location. “It is a little difficult to find if you haven’t been there,” Jackson said. The address is 3553 S. Carter Road, Cedar Hill, Tennessee, 37032, and directions are available at the website www.ollsm.org by clicking on the “Contact Us” link.

Also on the webpage is a link to picture galleries from throughout the history of the church, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Click on the “About Our Parishes” link and then for the link to the galleries.